Fatherhood is a major theme well worthy of our study, perhaps with imagination relative to its meaning. Of the various terms that God appears to be comfortable in assigning his meaning to mankind, father is one. He uses other words, not considered here except to note that each one reflects some factor of God’s relationship to mankind – or his nature. (Families no longer use meaning in the names they choose for their children – a shift from much of history.) When a person uses the phrase for God, the Man upstairs, he or she is close to irreverence, perhaps has crossed over without realizing it. God is God, Lord, Savior, Friend, Creator, Shepherd, King, Comforter. Handel’s librettist included that wonderful trilogy of words: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, and Prince of Peace. We do well to study the names of God in the history of mortal beings. Here we choose Father, perhaps in ways we have not imagined before. Jesus is introduced as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit certainly functions as the person of God that mothers (nurtures) us. The human family reflects the Trinity of God. (Ephesians 5) As the man, wife, and child are made one in family, so the Trinity is one. The Apostle espouses a reflection of the Trinity in the family.
We are impressed in modern, natural life how little some fathers give to the generation and nurture of children, and how much the mother is expected to give. This is not to deny that what the father gives in nurture is important, vital for a child, and it ought to be more than we find in general analysis of society. Lives of children become better formed when the father is important to family nurture, as well as offering protection found first in provision for life needs. Break in effectiveness occurs when fathers back away, or in the rebellion of a child unwilling to be guided by a loving and involved father. The story of the prodigal fixes basic responsibility on the son. The father is noted for his wisdom and love, not only in his concern for the prodigal, but for the obedient son who has become a bit distracted from values, perhaps is a bit self-righteous and selfish. The parable is a focus on the obedient son. The public may have missed the main point. Jesus was talking to persons who had kept the faith in many ways, but lost the importance of the personal meaning related to duty, service and love meaning. Self-righteousness is not always easily recognized. The parable remains as an educative factor related to social life and personal education.
In the melding together of the genders in our era, the context of family is being adjusted. God is stern with fathers, more than mothers. This does not mean that one role is lesser or better than the other. Scripture offers a sufficient number of illustrations of this in the humility of Ruth, Abigail, Esther, of the unnamed (but magnificent and magnified) woman of Proverbs, Chapter 31, of the virgin, Mary, of the women mentioned in Romans, Chapter 16 – and others. We seem not to understand our genders (equal but different), even our variant generations, in the divine analogy of God and relationships. Our modern society provides even less context for the biblical concepts, but they need not for the individual to capture them, and practice the counsel. The biblical meaning holds in various cultural contexts. As we understand life when it was rural, and try to keep its lessons, so we can keep the better when any human context changes. Sociologists know we are in changing contexts all the while, but the human needs remain as they were from the beginning. My gender, talents, nationality, strength, even my wisdom in following true faith do not change my place, or any other place in the love of God, and the duty of family life. All benefits are related to faithfulness in following the patterns that send me in the direction of trying to live up to the life found in Jesus Christ, who fully modeled the fatherhood of God. God acts as he does because he is compelled by truth to care for his creation. He wants fathers to treat their families as he does his.
In biological pictures from Scripture, God addresses the point that God is the God of our fathers so to say that he is the authority and provider for life stimulated from the generation of the mother’s child. In that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, births and nurtures families that include him. That life has divine seed in it, and that preserved by God. The mystery of spiritual life is partly perceived in family parable. We learn in that fatherhood how fathers ought to function – as also we do with mothers and children. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020